March | 2015 | The EOS Horizon

Iraq should be dissolved

March 26, 2015 at 11:36 am (Culture, Future, Geopolitics, Politics, Strategic Analysis)
Tags: 21st Century. Political Crisis, Confederalism, Culture, Daesh, Ethnic Cleansing, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurdistan, Mashreq, Middle East, Religion, Sectarianism, Syria, Wars

by Enrique Lescure

Introduction

We all have seen the news from Iraq and Syria from the last year. Beheadings, immolations, persecutions of ethnic and religious minorities. This dramaturgy has something as unusual in today’s world as a clear villain. The Islamic State. The Caliphate. Daesh.

That sinister group has killed tens of thousands of people in both Iraq and Syria, have plans of world conquest that makes Adolf Hitler’s Lebensraum look modest, and have even tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction to perpetuate Holocausts against Christians, Jews and Shi’ites.

Right now, a counter-offensive consisting of an unlikely alliance of the US airforce, the Iraqi Army and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias are now engaged in an offensive against Tikrit, the childhood city of Saddam Hussein and an important Sunni town. The IS are not growing any more in Iraq and Syria, and are fighting on three or four fronts against their enemies – united by nothing but their common hatred of IS.

So, does this mean that it is likely there will be peace soon in the Middle East?

Will the Middle East know peace the day the Islamic State lies crushed?

No, if it only was so simple. Truth is, that the IS are not a cause of the current war. And the underlying causes for the current war will still persist even after the collapse of the IS.

The formation of Iraq and Syria

The area between the highlands of Turkey and Iran, and the deserts of Arabia is known as the Fertile Crescent, a largely flat plain (with the exception of the hills of Caanan and the mountains of Lebanon). This area is where agricultural civilization was born, 12.000 years ago, and where the first cities and states emerged. Syria, Israel, Palestine and Iraq are boasting some of the oldest archeological remains known to humankind.

Despite this, the modern states of Iraq and Syria are pretty recent inventions. While partially drawn from ancient geographic delineations (I am surprised the British did not christen Iraq into Mesopotamia), what decided the border between Iraq and Syria was primarily an old WW1 agreement between Britain and France, dividing the possessions of the decaying Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.

Following the war, Iraq and Syria became mandates for the League of Nations (the predecessor to the UN), administered by Britain and France respectively. One modern analogy would be the status of Kosovo between 1999 and 2008, when it was formally a Serb autonomous province administered by the UN with NATO as those responsible for order on the ground.

Britain and France did however not desire truly independent states, and instead favoured dependency and weak local administrations. Copying their methodologies in Africa, these colonial powers imposed systems were ethnic and sectarian minority groups were favoured as administrators and officer cadres. In Iraq, the Sunni minority were favoured, while in Syria and Lebanon the French favoured Christians and Alevites.

This strategy failed to ensure European hegemony over the Fertile Crescent, partially because of the Second World War, and partially because many educated Arabs were rejecting their sectarian identities during this era, instead striving towards Pan-Arabism.

Syria – which was a republic – saw the political power move into the hands of nationalists during the 1950’s, but political instability led first to a short-lived Union with Egypt, and in 1970 towards the Assad dictatorship, which came to draw its security staff and officer cadres from the Alevite minority.

In Iraq, the British had imposed a constitutional monarchy consisting of the Hedjazi Hashemite royal family (which still controls the throne in Jordan). In 1958, a violent revolution supported by Moscow led to the deaths of the Hashemite king and the Pro-western prime minister Nuri as-Said. The military regime was in its turn toppled in 1968 by the Ba’ath Party, then headed by Saddam Hussein. The Saddam regime saw challenges in the form of increasing Kurdish national sentiments and the rise of Shi’ite islamist ideology in the south. Instead of choosing to include these groups into the national project, Saddam instituted brutal repression, both through military means and through his security service, the Mukhabarat.

The preparations of the current drama

en.wikipedia.org

We should not herein describe the US reasons for the Iraqi intervention – it would take too much space. What we can say is that decision-makers in America decided to opt for a strategy inspired by the successful management of Post-war Germany, which meant a combination of “denazification” and introduction of democratic institutions. In Iraq’s case, this meant that the Ba’ath Party was banned and that all Ba’ath Party members were purged from positions of public responsibility.

This would maybe not have been so problematic if it wasn’t so that most public officials were members of the Ba’ath Party, not because of conviction but because it was a must in Saddam’s Iraq. Thus, large segments of Iraq’s managerial class were banned from their professions. This included the Iraqi army, which meant that the US had to sponsor and direct the build-up of a new army.

Introducing parliamentary democracy to Iraq (luckily, the US did not introduce a US-style presidential system, which would probably have caused the current situation to explode far earlier), the US unintentionally handed over power to Iraq’s Shi’ite majority. Since most active Shi’ite politicians previously either had led lives in exile in neighbouring Iran (an ideological adversary to America and Israel) or had been parts of underground anti-Saddam groups, professing their religious identity and being at least morally backed by Iran.

Leaving aside the rivalry between Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the immediate cause for the meteoric rise of the Islamic State in Iraq in 2013-2014 was – apart from the civil war in neighbouring Syria – the fact that many Sunni professionals, officers and ordinary citizens supported the IS when they moved into Fallujah, Mosul and Tikrit. This was not primarily because the IS was popular, but because the Shia-dominated Al-Maliki government was loathed amongst the Sunni minority, and also had began to repress the Sunnis, by purging Sunni politicians and bureaucrats within their own government.

Caspian Report goes into this with more detail, as does the War Nerd.

Iraq should be dissolved

Right now, Iraq’s Shia-dominated army is, together with the US airforce and Iranian-supported militias, striving to retake

theatlantic.com

Tikrit and Mosul from the Islamic State. This offensive has proven to be slow and grinding, and still the Islamic State are holding out in parts of Tikrit. More controversially, there are signs that the Shi’ite militias are committing violations against the Sunni civilian population, perpetuating the grievances that led to the support of the Islamic State in the first place.

There was a time when Iraq (and to a larger extent, Syria) was a potential nation-state, not only geographically but also socially. However, oppression, exclusion, multiple wars and institutional damage beyond repair have blasted such a progress beyond oblivion.

For example, one of the reasons that the Islamic State has not moved into Baghdad is that Baghdad is no longer a religiously mixed city, but rather has become overwhelmingly Shia-dominated, following the Iraqi civil war of 2005 – 2009 (which in itself is but an earlier phase of this war).

With the lack of stable institutions and a country divided in ethnic and sectarian lines, politics in Iraq becomes less about policies and ideologies, and more about what ethnic or sectarian group you are belonging to. The perpetuation of Iraq as a (under-theory) unified state will serve to perpetuate the very instability that it is meant to counter.

One proposal for a Post-Iraqi future is an Iraq divided along ethnic and sectarian lines, as seen as this map up to the right. This solution however is sub-optimal. It will solve the issue of who should control Iraq in a winner-takes-it-all-gamble, by ending the very game that allows for such a situation to fester. It would not however serve to protect minorities such as Christians, Yezidis, Druzes and Alevites from hostile majority populations. Such a situation, which aims for more but smaller nation-states, will not serve the aims of secularism, or protect the objective interests of the Middle East in the long term.

A confederational solution

A solution could be to establish a general armistice and then hold a joint peace conference for Syria and Iraq. This conference would establish two border changes. Firstly, an independent Kurdish nation-state should be formed, composed of Kurdish-majority regions in Iraq and Syria. This Kurdistan will be a “kleinkurdistan“, which won’t be politically adjoined to Kurdish-majority regions of Turkey and Iran. There should therefore be a necessity to include Turkey and Iran in the process and ensure a solution that can be acceptable to all parties.

As for Iraq and Syria, both states should be abolished and replaced not with a multum of nation-states (Most of Syria is impossible to divide into minor states), but with a Mashriqi Confederation stretching from Aleppo to Basrah. This confederation would out of necessity be very de-centralised, and consist of self-governing cantones which might be arranged after ethnic and sectarian lines. The Confederation would have a strong, pluralist constitution, affirming the equal rights of all citizens no matter their professed faith. The confederational government should – like in Lebanon – have legislated it so that representation is guaranteed for all groups (and yes, I know Lebanon had a bloody civil war in 1973-1990).

For the first decade or so, this confederation would probably need to be under a UN mandate, until a new generation of leaders could grow up and assume the reins of government.

Summary

Right now, the Middle East is moving towards its own version of the Thirty Years War, as Saudi Arabia and Iran are clashing over Yemen, and the Turkish-Saudi-Iranian rivalry is left unresolved by the collapse of the Islamic State. After the fall of the Islamic State, it would probably be a good idea to scrap the Sykes-Picot agreement and have a regional conference that delineates a new order.

Any new order that aspires to be stable and guarantee the human rights of all citizens – religious minorities included – must however also entail an institutional and cultural transformation. In a situation where defined collectives with a winner-takes-it-all-mentality are clashing over the control of the state and are the foundations for the political movements, it is impossible to establish a fair bureaucracy and good governance. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that the growing generations should learn lessons about communication and conflict resolution from this bloody war.

Or else, it will be truly meaningless.

On direct democracy

March 20, 2015 at 10:47 pm (Anthropology, Culture, Ideology, Politics)
Tags: Alternative Socio-economic systems, Culture, Democracy, Direct Democracy, Earth, Earth Organisation for Sustainability, Global Politics, Guantanamo, Obama, Pan-terranism, politics, Terranism

maremonti-istra.hr

By Enrique Lescure

Introduction

This is a continuation of my thoughts regarding the previous article, but this time focusing on democratic and political participation within political frameworks. My reasoning herein is based both on practical and normative frameworks. I am however well aware that I will move deep into normative territory for this post, and therefore – to not be accused for inconsistency later on – I will hereby state that structural organisation of the direction of the public political will is partially dependent on the concrete situation that we are/that we will face within a certain amount of time. Therefore, what applies under an ideal state of dynamic equilibrium may not apply during times of emergency (and I would argue that we are entering such a time of emergency).

One such issue, is the issue of being able to make decisions quickly. While quick decisions may not be anchored in the civil community, they can be necessary under conditions such as hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes and volcanoes. It could be argued that the crises of climate change and the destruction of eco-systems, soil and freshwater represents a very slow but persistent on-going disaster, and that – politically speaking – we may even be in need of temporal arrangements that are more centralized and organises larger groups of communities than before. This can in itself be problematic however, since the scars of emergency measures are difficult to heal and near-impossible to remove.

This post is intended to be far happier than that, and discuss how I think constitutional and political systems ought to be organised.

The issue of scale

tech.co

When asked upon what my ideal country is, being an active member of EOS and so, I usually half-jokingly state that it is San Marino. The reasoning of course is not based on ideology, economic or social policies or even the kind of democratic system the Sanmarinese people are using, but on size.

I believe that the size of polities have both quantitative and qualitative aspects that can probably be measured.

The reason why is that your vote is mattering more in a smaller political context, in terms of what influence you have as a voter and as a member of the citizenry. Mathematically speaking, you have far more influence over the political future as a member of the Swedish electorate than as a member of the electorate to the European Parliament, or as an American citizen voting in US federal elections.

Size can also be understood in terms of space, in this case geographic space. For example, if your government is located in a capitol far away from you, it is likely that it would focus more on the regions adjacent to the capitol region, rather than peripheral regions. It is also more likely that elites are drawn from urban regions where the government is located, due to proximity to the power-brokers themselves and to the institutions that create a new elite generation.

A third factor is that communitarianism is completely impossible within political contexts that consist of hundreds of millions of people. When I travelled to Russia in 2003, there was an insurgent attack against civilians in the North Caucasus region. Our Russian hosts did not mind it very much, and reacted much like how Swedes react to earthquakes in Turkey and Greece. This does not imply that Russians are defective, but rather that humans in general are predisposed towards emotional investment with those that they view as closer to themselves.

That also holds true of items and projects that people engage in. One example is how well the Israeli Kibbutzim system worked in the early phase of its history, contra the atrocious results of the Soviet Kolchoz system. In the Kibbutzim, volunteers driven by an ideological conviction and unified by a common identity struggled together to form cooperatives, whereas the Kolchoz system was the result of farmers being forced to give away what they’ve worked for themselves to the state, and then being forcefully relocated into collective farms which had no freedom in determining their own identity, and no freedom of movement.

A smaller example is for example youth halls in vulnerable neighbourhoods, that constantly get vandalised. However, when the youths partake in the construction or renovation of the youth hall, it is more unlikely that it will face vandalism (at least for that generation of youths).

What we can see for a pattern here is that the commitment of people is growing when they are allowed a greater opportunity to participate in processes that shape their lives.

How to disinherit enfranchisement

Parliamentary and Republican democracy as concepts did not emerge overnight, but gradually evolved during the 19th century, with landed, religious, political and moneyed elites gradually releasing more and more power to parts of the public to determine policy. Despite that, elites have still a key to keeping power and be able to project their interests before the interests of the majority, by forming electoral systems that serve to cement their rule and to channel in potential or real opposition into the mainstream of power rejuvenation.

I could write a lengthy segment about that, but I prefer to instead share an excellent youtube video which describes some of these processes.

On another note, indirect democracy and party structures in themselves are problematic from a democratic perspective. The reason why is, like it has been pointed out before by Tiberius Gracchus, that an elected representative can vote against their own promises in an election when they are in power. One recent example from Sweden was when Fredrik Federley, a popular and intelligent young Centre politician, made statements and speeches which indicated that he would protect integrity on the Internet and prevent legislation that would increase surveillance.

In 2008, two years after being elected to the Riksdag, the elective body voted on a highly unpopular law which would subject cellphone conversations and mail exchanges to

frihetsveckan.se

storage by the Radio Interception Unit of the military security (FRA). Federley intended to vote against the law, but rescinded at the last moment (if that was not a political theatre), and then voted for the law, despite having ran a successful personal campaign two years before intending to protect the personal integrity of his voters.

The same can be applied for Obama and his promise of an executive decision to close Guantanamo Bay (which still is running, six years into his presidency).

Some actions, such as a vote or an executive order, which at first glance seem easy to pass through, are shown to be difficult – while other decisions, such as carrying through unpopular international agreements, seem to be near inevitable. Right now for example, the US and the EU are negotiating a massive free trade agreement (TTIP), of which we are none the wiser about the details. A few charming tidbits indicate that this agreement will contain a clause that will give corporations the right to sue governments if governments install regulations that will hurt the profitability of the corporations – in short placing corporate profit interests above popular will.

Some things, such as human rights, ecological concerns and core values have to be placed over popular will at all times. However, corporate profits can hardly apply to that club. Rather, the issue of corporate profits reminds of the idea that the state should subsidise prostitution so everyone can have sex. Profits are not a right, for the sake of Gaia!

Anyway, this rant aside, we can see that electoral cycles and parliamentarism are hardly a guarantee to popular sovereignty. Governments and politicians are more often than not left unscathed by the breaks in their electoral promises, especially not since major issues like the FRA law or TTIP often enjoy bipartisan support both from the centre-right and from the centre-left. Such agreements can almost only be delayed by mass protests, but soon reappear under other names.

TTIP is essential, you understand. Economists estimate that it can increase the GDP of the European Union with 0,5%.

What do we suggest then? Revolutionary councils?

Direct Democracy, City-States and Cantons

To reconnect to the first segment of this article, I would strongly recommend that we move forward as suggested in The Design with a confederational approach. While we do not suggest the break-up of nation-states, a good idea to strengthen the sovereignty of the citizenry would be to perhaps focus more on regions and cities, and less on huge political entities, divesting more power locally or regionally.

This can also cause problems of course. For example, education and healthcare are today so complex and resource-intense endeavours that small entities may be unable to deliver good quality. The solution would then be for local units to move these aspects up to the regional or sub-confederational level (to not speak of that how EOS sees it, healthcare would be managed through the technate, and education at least partially through the technate, which of course would be based on similar de-centralised principles).

What we can see before us is a world consisting of various type of political entities. Republics, city-states, communes, cantons, condominiums, collectives, regions,

inhabitat.com

confederations, sea nomads, virtual nations, micro-nations and even constitutional monarchies. A diverse, colourful world where a multitude of differing social models are tested out simultaneously.

We imagine that many of these entities would employ forms of direct democracy, where all the citizens have a direct seat and a vote in the legislative council. Of course, there would be politically elected officials presiding the legislative council, but their role would mostly be to enact the decisions of the legislature (as a side note, in my home city of Umea, northern Sweden, the municipality has recently decided to abolish the opportunity of citizens to write sign lists for citizen proposals).

Some would claim that direct democracy would create a wild, uncontrollable situation. People can vote in all kinds of insane things, such as free ice-cream or to establish Europe’s largest homeopathic hospital. People, they argue, cannot be trusted with political power, since they would only vote short-sighted and for their immediate needs.

If we look at Switzerland, however, where referendums are generously employed, we can see that most of the referendums become clear victories of the Nay-side. I believe there might be several reasons behind that. Firstly, public opinion is generally more cautious and less active than the activists writing platforms for political parties. Secondly, politicians are often driven by personal ambition, and aim to change laws not only because they believe it would be good for society, but also because of their personal legacy. Ordinary citizens generally do not think about their personal legacy when voting in a referendum.

Constitutionalism

Another problem can be when a political legislature wants to repress a segment of their population, or members of another legislature, or wants to prohibit free speech, movement or violate personal rights. After all, almost 40% of the Germans voted for Hitler in 1932 (the first election, not the second). Sadly, religious bigotry, sexism, racism, psychopathy and exploitation have existed in human societies for millennia, and EOS (unlike TVP for example) do not ascribe to the ideas of Descartes and Skinner that human behaviour can be engineered into anything by the environment. The human condition is one of being able to hold on to ideals and failing to adhere to them, of both love and war.

Therefore, to have a wildly divergent confederational structure demands that all the differing groups adhere to one constitution. This constitution would not be based on forms of legislatures, but on common principles and core values. Groups that don’t want to follow it have the choice of not opting in, and those who violate it can very well be kicked out of the Confederation (there are a few problems with that which I would probably address in a future post).

A flawed beta-version exists in the form of the old NET charter.

Pan-terranism

Our main idea is not to see a world of warring city-states, but an umbrella of thousands of local and regional authorities joined together by sub-confederations that in their turn

evolo.us

form the basis for a world conderation – a United Earth. Why would this be necessary? The answer lies in the Constitution. There needs to be a body that oversees that all the members adhere to the principles of the Constitution. The World Confederation would not necessarily have any other tasks at hand.

The Confederation would probably never consist of all of the planet either, since it is built on voluntary agreements. But if the technate works and expands throughout communities, the confederation would naturally expand too. Of course, a community can choose to not be a part of the confederation while being a part of the technate, and the other way around as well.

Communities should be able to link up however, wherever they happen to be, and then form their own sub-confederations.

Pan-terranism is not the same as a global federation or a New World Order, which as concepts generally are built on the idea of a unipolar centre, governed through a power pyramid of military, corporate and financial power, which is imposing an iron grip over humanity. Rather, Pan-terranism as an ideal is a vision of a horizontal alignment between autonomous entities which each contribute valuable parts of the collective experience that is humanity. Within the Terran Technate and the Terran Confederation, there could be room for a diverse variety of cultures, sub-cultures, ethnicities, collectives and experiments.

Green Anarchists, Amish and Deep-greens may prefer to live in rural, non-technological pristine societies, while transhumanists might want to live in floating city-states or orbital stations. Both needs can be fulfilled simultaneously within the same political framework.

Some people might prefer to live in sexually liberated zones where they walk around naked, while others might want to adhere to stricter norms.

Some would like calm communities, while others would want to live on eternal night clubs.

Some would be nomads, others would be dwelling in virtual worlds constantly.

And some would of course live in towns, villages and cities which look virtually identical to today, but which are ecologically sustainable.

If you don’t like your community, there would always exist a community where you would fit in. And if you don’t want to be a part of the Terran Technate and the Terran Confederation, you would not have to.

Of course, we would not be able to realise this vision within our life-time, but we are convinced that the world is moving in our direction, technologically and politically.

But sadly not fast enough at the moment.

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On de-centralization and distribution: The arguments for a holonic system

March 14, 2015 at 5:50 pm (Alternative Socio-economic systems, Anthropology, Culture, Economics, EOS, Psychology, Science)
Tags: Alternative Socio-economic systems, Democracy, Distributed Power, Earth Organisation for Sustainability, Egalitarian, Holons, Libertarian, Social sphere

taken from inhabitat.com

By Enrique Lescure

Introduction

One of the major differences between EOS and the so-called RBE organisations, is that EOS aims very strongly for de-centralisation of power. During the time we studied the texts from Technocracy Incorporated, we often had feisty debates where the issues were anascopic vs katascopic systems. The people we debated it claimed that the future must be based on katascopic systems for a post-scarcity society to work.

EOS, or NET as we were named back then, argumented that distributed systems held a larger degree of resilience, and also allowed for people to better be able to contribute in accordance with their talents, creativity and limitations. We were told that was an anascopic way of doing things. We are also arguing that is applicable to democratic and political participation (chapter 5, pg 14, The Design).

So what is this debate about, and what does the terms mean? That is what this article is about.

Anascopic & Katascopic – distribution vs centralisation

permanentcrisis.blogspot.com

During the early 20th century, it was generally assumed that the world was moving towards more and more centralisation and mass production, which was correct at that time. That was also seen as highly desirable, since it allowed for more production and more efficiency. This process culminated in the establishment of the world’s first (industrial) command economy, in the USSR in 1927.

The main principle for this type of economy, no matter if it is a mega-corporation or a stalinist state, is that there is a hierarchical pyramid consisting of echelons of decision-making, that distribute requests to subdivisions which then carry out the production orders. You are familiar with it from most classical corporations.

According to the proponents, this model allows for the effective coordination of large resources, that can be pooled into massive projects that in scope can dwarf that what smaller organisations are undertaking. Also, it would allow resources to be effectively distributed to the subdivisions so they can undertake their aims.

This same principle applied for the old hydraulic empires (chiefly Egypt) during the Bronze Age.

Does this claim hold?

Arguably, like everything else, the answer is both yes and no. Large, centralised organisations are effective at mobilizing resources and achieving grand quantitative results. It takes shorter time for a country that is utilising a centrally planned economy have become industrialized somewhat quicker than countries that have been employing a more market-oriented approach (it is only when countries have achieved an industrialized state that planned economies start to lag behind). Mega-corporations are also today the largest holders of resources on the planet aside from the financial institutions and banks (though some mega-corps, namely within the tech business are experimenting with less centralised models).

On the other hand, the centralized model holds many flaws as well. You all are well-aware of the short-comings of the command economies of the old Socialist Bloc, which do not need to be reiterated here. The same problems, to a smaller extent, are existing within large, centralised mega-corporations. For example, a classical problem for the management of subdivisions is that funding is often reduced if the subdivision is not using up its entire share of money from one year’s budget, which can incentivize the acquisition of new chairs or computers for the department, despite that it would not represent any tangible upgrade. Since corporations – unlike countries – tend to run at a net profit, that is not one of the major problems (the major problem has not so much to do with centralisation as with externalities and effects on the economy on the macro-scale).

Ultimately, it is a case of what effects we desire.

Distributed systems – increased resilience

perfectbluemoon.blogspot.com

One of the most centralised systems in the history of the Earth was the Incan Empire, basically a command economy (a hydraulic empire minus the hydraulic part), where all decisions were left to the divine figurehead – the Sapa Inca, or God Emperor. The Empire commanded armies of tens of thousands, maintained a road network through the Andine mountains that stretched for thousands of kilometres, rivalling the Roman road network, and had a highly developed and centralised bureaucracy.

The Empire fell when 150 Spaniards under Francisco Pizarro captured the Sapa Inca in Cajamarca in 1532.

A few decades before that, the Florentine philosopher and political scientist Niccólo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that large, centralised structures, like the ancient Achaemenid Empire or the Ottoman Empire, were more prone to collapse if the central authority crumbles, since these structures often force local institutions to submit. Just a few decades ago, an empire which dwarfed both the Incan, Achaemenid and Ottoman empires collapsed – not because of a foreign invasion (it was virtually unconquerable by its possession of enough nuclear arms to turn the Earth into ashes), nor because of a group of conquistadors. It fell because its ruling elite had lost their beliefs in the ideology that glued the Empire together, and were fighting for their own wealth and interests.

I am of course referring to the USSR.

The lesson of this is that centralised structures might be excellent at power projection, but power projection requires much energy and capacity, and is suitable for short-term projects. Such a project could be defined as building one billion units of a specific thing (housing, transport units, kilometres of highway), winning a war or maximising profits for the nearest three months. However, for long-term sustainable projects, or projects that drag out into increased degrees of complexity over time, centralised institutions are badly equipped to respond to the challenge.

Centralised institutions collapse if the centre is incompetently led, is destroyed by external pressure or is isolated from the main body, either by institutional limitations, by external factors or by corruption.

An alternative is to have an entirely distributed system, consisting of multiple autonomous structures that are contained within a network. However, as the history of Feudalism proves, such structures are generally unstable and prone to infighting over where resources should be utilised. What is the strength of de-centralised institutions, is their resilience. If one unit is turning corrupt, inefficient or is outright destroyed by external pressure, other units can quickly distribute the burdens of their fallen co-structure amongst themselves, and the system can thus survive more blows than a centralised, authoritarian system can endure.

The EOS compromise – a holonic system

renewableplus.blogspot.com

There are two ways to address the issue of centralization contra de-centralization, normative and pragmatic.

The normative approach is intended to ensure that certain key values are enshrined in human interactions. Ultimately, it gives the basis for an ideological view on the world, where matters are settled in relationship to how they correspond to the values of the community, of the elites and how these values can be ensured to manifest themselves in the real world and affect the actions of individuals and groups.

The pragmatic approach is more focused on tangible results. Then these intended results can in themselves be derived from normative values, or partially or wholly affected by concerns that have little to do with normative values.

I would argue that there is seldom a totally and complete division between the normative and pragmatic approaches when constructing and forming systems, but one could differentiate between more normative approaches and more pragmatic approaches.

A normative approach in its own right is entirely or mostly devoid of pragmatic ramifications. The approach exists to exist and be unchangeable and unchallengeable. It should not take into any considerations the reality of the particular spatial or social environments it is operating within.

A pragmatic approach without any normative values embedded within it, would be completely directed towards maximising its chances for survival, unlimited by moral or constitutional limitations.

Thus, we can conclude that if we seek to initiate a constructive process, what we do must be characterised by both normative foundations and a pragmatic, sober outlook on our opportunities to make a significant impact on reality.

Dr Andrew Wallace chose to direct the EOS towards employing the Holonic model as a way to manage systems.

Pragmatic foundation

The holonic model is adapted as a methodology for what the programming of the new generation of intelligent machines should form in terms of behaviour and processes. In many ways, it is derived from the third or fourth waves of industrialization in the same way as Fordism, Taylorism and Stalinism were derived from the first and second waves. The principle is that there is a network of autonomous nodes which are interconnected within a network and follow the same authoritative programming (as opposed to authoritarian). These nodes are autonomous and can form larger units when and if needs are arising, but can also split off new nodes when there is a need for it.

Within EOS, we believe that this model could be employed within networks consisting of individuals that aim for overarching similar goals.

Ultimately, this system would not work primarily because of sticks and carrots, but would work because it would be insulated by institutional/cultural factors which will need to form organically (as opposed to being constructed) by the limited implementation of holonic systems, where the approaches most in accordance with the stated goals, and with the experiences from implementation, will be developed on, while those forms of processes that doesn’t benefit the goals or values will be abandoned.

The holonic system envisioned by EOS is also based a lot of the cultural and socio-technological environment created by the Internet, where the goal is that all holons within the network should be interconnected by a system called “the Technate”, which in our vision basically is a common registar or mindmap of the network, the available resources and the resource flows between the nodes. Each node must also be communicating with at least another node within the network, and must be transparent.

Nodes that are going corrupt and don’t want to cooperate will be excluded from the system, but through a process where it should be entirely obvious to everyone involved why they are being excluded. Of course, the early implementations of this will fail, for reasons that we cannot foresee now. But for every failure, the system will be able to auto-correct and move ahead, which is the very point of resilience as a concept.

Normative basics

We believe that all human beings should be able to feel that they are participating in society and in a social context. Of course, that does not imply that people should be forced to partake, but most human beings naturally want to feel included. One of the damning social effects of the precariat and youth unemployment is that young people a whole generation of human beings are growing up under conditions were they feel alienated from their social environment, causing resentment.

We can theoretically, if we focus all our attention on automatization, create a society where only 10-20% of the current labour power is needed. However, under conditions of maximum efficiency, this could have devastating psychological and emotional effects of the very fabric of society.

Human beings need not only to have their material needs satisfied, but should also feel that they are needed. The holonic model will allow for humans to join or exit dynamic project teams, that move together and cooperate on various issues.

Humans also have a need to express their creative potential, and small, autonomous groups give a better opportunity for human beings to express that quality, through cooperation. After all, for millions of years, the ancestors of humanity lived and co-existed in small, autonomous groups.

Summary

The Holonic system envisioned by EOS cannot be described in vivid detail, simply because systems are not formed primarily on the drawing desk, but through real-world interactions between individuals, and between the groups and the environment. There also need to be formed institutions around the structures, which ca imbue them with meaning (and from what I’ve seen, it usually takes two to four generations to form a culture). Nevertheless, with the new technology and with our need to form a sustainable world, we have the opportunity to create a culture that is truly egalitarian and libertarian.

Source: http://www.eoslife.eu/files/Design.pdf

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